Update 5/1/17:I just discovered an incredibly handy Chrome extension called MerchTools. MerchTools simplifies the process of bulk editing t-shirt prices, but this post will go into detail about why it’s important to change prices of unsold designs, so you should still read through this post. I’m adding MerchTools to my Resources page, and will be reviewing it in-depth soon.

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A few weeks ago, I wrote about a simple method I use to “rescue” t-shirts that were about to be removed by Amazon. I’ve gotten a few emails about that, so I decided to turn it into a short blog post. I’ve had some pretty decent success with this method, so I thought I’d share.

All I do is… (wait for it…)

Lower t-shirts a few weeks before they get removed.

That’s it.

I could end the post here, but I figured I’d show you the quickest and most effective way to edit a bunch of t-shirt designs all at once. It’s not hard to go through each t-shirt one at a time to change the price, but it can become pretty cumbersome once you have hundreds of shirts to go through. I’m a firm believer in working as efficiently as possible, and this, along with staying Merch organized, are two simple ways you can do just that.

Why I Change T-Shirt Prices

With Merch by Amazon, you can change t-shirt prices whenever you want.

I choose to only change t-shirt prices when a design is about to being removed. Other than that, I don’t touch the price. Some people like to hike up their shirt prices if they consistently sell, but I haven’t experimented with that yet so I have no input on that.

Dropping t-shirt prices is one of your last-stitched efforts to sell a design that hasn’t sold before.

The more live shirts you have, the more sales you will have. Your goal should be to have as many perpetually live designs on Amazon as possible,not just upload as many designs as you can. If you keep having to reupload designs, not only are you wasting time, but you are wasting a daily slot in the future.

I’m not saying every shirt that you drop the price on will sell, because the reality is a lot won’t. But if you can convert just a few shirts every few weeks, that does add up.

When To Change T-Shirt Prices

I typically sit down every 2-3 weeks and drop the price of designs that are pending removal. I definitely don’t change prices everyday, or even every week – but I do make a point to sift through my Manage tab every couple weeks to reduce the price.

Up until March 2017, any design that didn’t sell would automatically be removed from Amazon after 60 days. Any designs that haven’t sold within the first 45 days (or had less than 15 days on the removal timer), I’d drop the price on. I figured if it hadn’t sold by then, it probably wasn’t going to.

Now that we have a 90 day removal rule, I will probably wait to drop the price until it’s been live for 60-70 days without any sales. That still gives me 3 whole weeks to potentially get at least one sale with the newly lowered price. Dropping the price is my last chance at saving that design from the chopping block.

You can always raise the price later on, and in fact, I recommend that you do that.

How To Price Unsold Designs

I like to price them at $13.99.

That leaves me room to make a decent profit, and hopefully gives buyers the chance to buy shirts at(what I consider to be) a pretty low price.

I usually list designs between $17.99-$19.99, so at $13.99, I’m hoping to attract a few buyers who are willing to purchase a shirt that is a little on the cheaper side.

The Low Price Mentality

Some people are impulsive buyers; other people are careful researchers. I tend to fall on the latter side of things. Even with inexpensive things like t-shirts, I still find myself researching until I find the perfect one.

Ryan decides he wants to buy a surfing shirt this summer. He does some research on Amazon, finds a few shirts he really likes, adds them to his cart or Wish List. That $19.99 price is a little too expensive, and decides to wait until he gets paid to purchase it. A few days later, he comes back, does one more quick search on Amazon- and sees the shirt he wanted has dropped in price! So, without even thinking twice, he buys it on the spot.

Flip the scenario another way, and maybe Ryan comes back to purchase the design he originally wanted, but sees his #2 choice (your pending removal design), dropped to $13.99. Does he spend $19.99 on the original one he wanted, or save a few bucks and get the #2 design?

Obviously this scenario is made up. But if you think about it, this kind of thing happens every single day on Amazon. When’s the last time you researched something for one of your kids or your mom or dad, but waited until the last minute to purchase? Have you ever added two products to your cart because you aren’t sure which one to go with, and checked a few days later to see the price has dropped?

I’m sure you have. We’ve all done that.

“So Danny, why don’t we just price everything low from the beginning?”

For one, you don’t want to saturate the market with low priced t-shirts. If you can sell shirts at $17.99 or $19.99, you absolutely should! At the end of the day, that’s more money in your pocket. Increasing the price the t-shirts is one very easy way to increase your profits with little to no effort.

But, I don’t recommend starting all designs out at a lower price. A lot of customers have a pre-concieved notion that low prices = low quality, and you actually may scare away customers. That’s why I recommend to only drop prices on unsold designs. You can always experiment with design prices after they’ve been proven to sell.

Who knows, maybe they employed this same tactic and were able to get a low of quick sales.

How To Quickly Edit T-Shirt Prices

Instead of opening your Manage tab, and going through your shirts one at a time, we’re going to speed up the process by opening shirt in their own window. I’ll first show you the way most people edit prices, and then show the method that is far superior.

Slow Method

Log into your Dashboard. Click Manage, and filter by Live.

2. Scroll to the bottom, and select 100 results Per Page. If you have more than 1 page of designs, click Page 1.

As you start to scroll up, you’ll probably see quite a few designs that are about to removed. It should look something like this:

Most people will click on Actions and edit each shirt one at time. Once you click Actions>Edit, it opens up the shirt editor on the same page you’re currently on. Don’t even try right-clicking and opening a new tab, that doesn’t work either.

If you edit your prices in succession this way, you end up having to click the Back button a bunch of times to get back to your list of pending removal designs.

Preferred Method

If using Chrome, press ALT+D to highlight the Manage page URL, and press ENTER to duplicate into a new tab.

Since we counted 8 shirts we want to change the price for, do this 8 times.

The goal here is to make 1 quick change across all shirts.

First, you’d go through each tab and click Actions, making sure to not to edit the same shirt you’ve opened in a previous tab. Then you’d go through each tab again, edit the price and click save. Then, you go through each tab one last time to click submit.

Before you know it, all 8 shirts have been edited very quickly!

When This Method Is Useful

If you have less than 100 shirts live, this method probably won’t save you a whole lot of time. But once you have a 10-20/per day upload limit, you’re obviously going to have some shirts that don’t sell. This means you could easily have hundreds of shirts that you need to edit prices for.

You can then use this method to quickly increase the price of shirt as well.

Like I said, editing shirt prices isn’t something you need make sure and do on a regular schedule, but I have had some pretty good luck with it. So much luck, in fact, that I’ll be doing a mini case study for one of my next blog posts.

Dawn DawnBlogtopus.com

1 year ago

Thank you for this tip. I am a new merch person, I only have 10 slots. I haven’t sold a single t-shirt, even though I have bought and uploaded a couple of your designs as well as making my own. Do you have any suggestions on how to get more exposure? I don’t have hundreds/thousands of Facebook friends to buy my shirts. I am willing to buy a Facebook ad or some other ad if you have any suggestions. Thanks.

Danny

1 year ago

When I upload designs, I want them to sell. Obviously not all of them will, but my goal is to get as many shirts to sell once as possible. Merch is a numbers game. The more shirts I have sell just once, the more I can potentially make each month. Editing prices is a very simple way to try and get a few additional designs live.